


trying to win in a losing game

by icedmatchalatte



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, Comfort/Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, more like, olympic gold medalists in jumping to conclusions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-03
Updated: 2020-08-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:26:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25694989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icedmatchalatte/pseuds/icedmatchalatte
Summary: Though there is much to be said about intention, nothing is ever meant to stay the same.
Relationships: Lee Donghyuck | Haechan/Mark Lee
Comments: 18
Kudos: 150





	trying to win in a losing game

**Author's Note:**

> even though they’re idols promoting under nct in this one, i tagged it as canon divergent for reasons like:  
> 1- everything in this thing is obviously fiction  
> but more importantly pretend that  
> 2- mahae are roommates in the 5th floor and all of 127 casually hangs out in the living room at all convenient-for-plot times  
> 3- 7dream was never not a thing for convenient plot development 
> 
> mostly from mark’s pov, but there are some nuggets here and there of hyuck’s pov 
> 
> hope you enjoy it <3

Mark knew it was irrational. At least, he’d tell himself that he knew. The half crumbled post-it was still stuck on the base of his bedside lamp, and Mark was on the verge of blaming it for everything that was going wrong in his life. 

_Irrational_ , he’d think. _Just a fucking piece of paper_. And yet, Donghyuck’s messy handwriting was still readable, blue ink stark against the fading yellow of the paper. A short message he’d written in a haste some busy morning, that Mark would only come to notice a couple of days later — and wouldn’t stop noticing since. 

**hey hyung~ we will make it!**

It was tilted and the rounded exclamation had curved dashes that looked like a smiling face. Mark had already moved the sticky note from his laptop (where he first found it) to the cork board above his desk, to the zipper side in his wallet, to a trash can, to the back and bottom of the third drawer in his wardrobe. To his bedside lamp. 

Donghyuck hadn’t said much about it, aside from teasing Mark for taking over 48 whole hours to find it, on some windy afternoon. In fact, Mark suspected that Donghyuck hadn’t noticed the post-it was still around at all. That maybe he’d forgotten he’d ever written it in the first place. 

_That would be kind of cruel_ , Mark would sometimes think, when Donghyuck asked to borrow something from Mark’s desk, hand almost brushing the old note, and acting like it wasn’t there. Like he hadn’t written it. Like he’d never said that he could make it through anything and everything, because Mark was there, because Mark was there with him, and _hyung, you know I’m always here for you_ and _I can be your strength if you’re mine too_.

Maybe he was just imagining it. Maybe he was going insane. 

The fact was that Mark couldn’t run away from Donghyuck’s words — he’d tried, once, pacing back and forth around the trash and mumbling to himself like a madman for entire minutes, before taking back the crumbled piece of paper and angrily shoving it in his pocket. If throwing the thing away didn’t work, he could always try hiding it, because out of sight, out of mind, or some equal bullshit Johnny would preach. All things considered, it should have worked, but then it was four in the morning and they all had to be up by seven and Mark couldn’t get a wink of sleep. Then it was _it’s Donghyuck’s fault_ and _how the fuck is your insomnia my fault now, asshole_ , all the while hearing Donghyuck’s encouraging voice so clearly even if he now refused to speak, and Mark thinking it was because he had somehow trapped Donghyuck’s voice under the piles of clothing in the back of his own wardrobe along with the note. So the post-it now remained on the base of Mark’s bedside lamp, even if a few feet away Donghyuck’s bed remained empty for the third night in a row. 

“Did you sleep well?”

“Is this you asking, or is it him?” Mark didn’t want to start his day by sounding cranky, at least not when talking to Jaehyun, who was only half awake and had absolutely nothing to do with the turmoil in Mark’s mind _or_ with the shitty temper he’d get from it. That was enough to fully wake him up, though, and Mark could see the way his group mate was actually thinking about the question, hands hovering over a half open yoghurt carton. 

“Wouldn’t you know,” he tried teasing, only to sigh after getting no response. “Haechie’s still sleeping, so,” Jaehyun sat down, sliding a second spoon over for Mark, but whatever he said next fell deaf to Mark’s ears. 

If Donghyuck wasn’t speaking to him, it’d be stupid to think he was speaking _of_ him. Mark knew better than that. Mark knew _Donghyuck_ better than that. 

He also knew that all of Donghyuck’s pillows remained untouched on his bed, and that the younger couldn’t be sleeping all that well without them. Even so, Jaehyun was still asking how _Mark_ had slept, probably knowing that Mark’s roommate wasn’t faring all that well. It felt like a jab, a purposeful one, but this was Jaehyun he was talking about, and maybe he was really going insane.

Mark got himself a spoonful from the carton. “I’m sorry,” he couldn’t bring himself to look up. “I’m sorry for all of this.”

He could still hear Jaehyun’s surprised laugh, though, and feel Jaehyun’s awkward pat on his head. “It’s alright, kiddo. He made a pretty cozy spot on the floor, and Johnny doesn’t mind either. Besides, you know he could sleep through a marching band’s practice,” another spoonful “I’m only worried about this whole arrangement because it’s only a matter of time until Johnny somehow forgets it and accidentally trips over him. And because, well, y’know,” a shrug “We— we don’t wanna see you guys like this.”

Mark still couldn’t look up. “I’m sorry.”

“Well, fix it,” Johnny said over a yawn, opening the fridge behind Jaehyun, and Mark nearly jumped out of his skin. If Jaehyun was awake, and Johnny was also awake, then it was only a matter of seconds until—

“Hyung, are we out of cereal?” Donghyuck’s sleepy voice came from the corridor, a cracked tone that Mark knew meant he wasn’t yet awake enough to get his pitch down to a proper whisper. When Donghyuck entered the kitchen and the first thing he did was lock eyes with Mark, it felt like the entire room fell silent. Or maybe it was just Mark who stopped breathing. 

But in a split second Donghyuck looked away, trailing after Johnny and greeting Jaehyun like Mark wasn’t even there. Hips resting against the table, back turned to Mark, making conversation with the other two like they were the only ones there. It was awkward and tense, and there were only so many times Jaehyun and Johnny could try including Mark in the conversation just for Donghyuck to cut him off before he lost his mind. 

The loud scrape of Mark’s chair against the floor was enough to make Donghyuck acknowledge his presence for a moment again, but Mark had already lost his appetite, breathing hard down the corridor before locking the bathroom door behind himself. 

There was a fourth night Mark spent alone in their shared room, and a fifth one — and suddenly a little over a week. So he began to either wake up before anybody else for breakfast, or have none at all, and sit at the very front of their van at all times pretending to be asleep. 

Donghyuck wasn’t talking to Mark. That was a fact that even the managers and staff had caught on, because not talking to each other was one thing, but pretending the other literally didn’t exist was a whole other ordeal, and Donghyuck did it too well. 

Mark wasn’t even going to pretend that he could handle the silence treatment well, because that just wasn’t the truth. Instead, every time the younger would enter a room he was in, Mark would get a headache from trying to figure out if Donghyuck would finally call a truce, and from the way his group mates would look at him with pity in their eyes, when it was obvious that Donghyuck had no intention of doing so. 

It was only a matter of time, Mark reasoned, for him to adapt to that situation the best way he could. 

So when well into the second week of their — quarrel? Disagreement? There hadn’t been enough communication from either side for it to be any of those things — Mark accidentally stayed back for longer than he intended at the practice rooms, and returned to the dorms well after midnight to a peacefully sleeping Donghyuck in their shared room, he had to take a moment to steady himself from the rush of foreign emotions swirling inside his mind. 

Mark had done it all; turned off the lights as quickly as he’d turned them on, taking careful steps on the carpeted floor to his side of the room, not even properly unmaking his bed in fear that any wrong movement might wake Donghyuck up. He’d laid down, back turned to Donghyuck’s side of the room, because he was unable to shut his eyes. But the soft breathing across the room was still steady, and Mark slowly willed his own to quiet down, even though that was the closest he’d been to Donghyuck outside of their daily schedules since the morning that started it all. 

There was a muffled beeping sound, quiet enough to be background noise any other time, but painfully loud in the absolute silence in the room, and Mark instantly knew he had fucked up again, somehow. Quickly turning his phone off and hugging it tightly against his chest, Mark squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath for a few moments, hoping the alarm hadn’t disturbed Donghyuck on the other bed. 

He’d been listening for too many minutes, thought, to ignore how the pattern of Donghyuck’s breathing had suddenly changed, and his suspicions proved to be true when there was some purposefully loud shuffling across the room, dragging footsteps, and a door being shut. 

Donghyuck had taken his pillows with him that time. 

The digital clock on the sound system was nearing two in the morning, and Mark urged himself not to fall asleep against the mirror. He should just wait until it was at least three, and then he could head back. With the bus ride and short walk, Mark would probably be back around four in the morning, and if he fell asleep in the living room couch, then maybe the first member to go into the kitchen could wake him up. 

And Donghyuck wouldn’t need to leave the room in the middle of the night because of him again. 

It was only a matter of time, Mark kept telling himself, practicing the choreography again and again and again and again, but the clock seemed to never quite get to 3AM. It had always been a matter of time, and that was him adapting to it. Donghyuck had sacrificed enough nights sleeping on the floor of Johnny’s and Jaehyun’s bedroom, when it should have never been him the one to leave what was supposed to be their shared space. When no one should have ever had to leave, and he didn’t know how to approach Donghyuck about it.

The city lights were bright and the late summer weather was still quickly warming up the empty streets, so the walk home at that unholy hour wasn’t all that insufferable. It was just that the longer Mark spent alone with his thoughts, the worse he’d feel. Left hand sporadically clenching and unclenching in his pocket, missing the feeling and reassurance of a crumpled sticky note in another lonely warm night, before everything. 

Taeyong’s disappointed sigh woke Mark up before his hands did, carefully ruffling Mark’s hair and wiping sleep dust away from his slowly blinking eyes, like Mark was just a little kid. 

“What are you doing out here?” Mark hadn’t even properly put the decorative pillows back on the couch before his mood soured, but Taeyong’s question was innocent enough. It only took one look for Mark to confirm that the leader indeed meant more than he asked, though, curved up eyebrows and eyes too big to hide any of his concern for the younger. It was too early for that. 

“Got back really late and was like, super tired,” he faked a content smile while stretching before passing by Taeyong to enter the kitchen. “Thought I’d pass out on the carpet, apparently made it to the couch after all,” a shrug. 

Mark didn’t dare look Taeyong in the eyes again. His tone was convincingly nonchalant even to his own ears, so he’d keep up the facade and buy some time making toast. 

On his peripheral vision, he could see Taeyong’s crossed arms, feet almost stepping into the kitchen and then backing away, a swaying motion that could put Mark on edge, but it was so entirely _Taeyong_ that he had to suppress a real smile. 

Finally, a sigh, and Taeyong stepped into the kitchen. “Mhm. Try to make it to your room next time, yeah?” a hand on Mark’s shoulder looking like all the warning he’d allow himself to give. “I know your schedule is getting tighter, and we don’t want you to hurt yourself.”

Mark nodded, softly, but when he caught Donghyuck sleepily leaving his — their — room half an hour later, and it dawned on Mark that it was the first time in two weeks that Donghyuck had slept a full night in his own bed instead on another room’s floor, he supposed he couldn’t keep that promise. 

It was awkward. A freshly out of the shower Mark, with dark eye bags and sore shoulders, and a half awake Donghyuck, soft and content and glowing. Mark still holding the bathroom door’s knob, and Donghyuck still holding their bedroom door’s knob, and eye contact long enough for it to warrant at least a word. But Donghyuck’s eyes widened a fraction, swiftly looking back to the untouched second bed inside the room, and then back to Mark. Mark’s skin prickled in anticipation of something, anything — more seconds of eye contact, no matter how awkward they were, maybe a good morning? No, that was probably pushing it, Donghyuck would certainly start off with something small, something like a— 

“Huh,” Donghyuck pressed his mouth in a tight line and nodded curtly, as if acknowledging something only to himself, leaving the bedroom door open. Giving Mark a tight lipped smile while passing him in the corridor, it was a moment that seemed to last seconds longer than what it actually did. 

Mark’s eyes followed Donghyuck’s form, dumbfounded, until the younger disappeared into the kitchen. It was only minutes later that Mark noticed his fingers played absentmindedly with the old piece of paper on his bedside lamp, smile threatening to split his face in half as he bumped his forehead against the computer’s keyboard. 

He was aware of how ridiculous it would sound if he said that out loud, but Mark was seriously beginning to think that there was little he wouldn’t do to hear Donghyuck talk to him again. And when Donghyuck willingly sat across from him at the breakfast table, face puffy and content after sleeping on an actual bed instead of a makeshift something in another room, Mark almost felt dizzy. He really wasn’t above doing something stupid when Donghyuck wouldn’t avert his eyes while looking at him. When, on the fourth night of Mark sleeping in the living room, Donghyuck was the first one up, and the one to wake Mark up too. When after two weeks of radio silence, he’d finally gotten a shake to his shoulders and a soft good morning from Donghyuck. 

If Mark could cry on command, he thought it would’ve been to those words. 

It was easier to pretend he fell asleep in the living room during weekdays, blaming late night practice sessions, but it was something entirely else on a weekend, and Mark really hadn’t thought things through. 

He managed to avoid questioning looks on Saturday morning, having slept with the TV on and a game controller on his chest. But it was suddenly night time, and the same excuse wouldn’t work twice in a row, and Mark could feel the panic rising up to his throat when Donghyuck opened their bedroom door and paused minutely upon seeing Mark inside. 

Donghyuck’s hand tightened on the door knob, and Mark felt like it could’ve been his throat.

“You don’t have to leave,” the words sounded rushed, just as winded as Mark felt, and Donghyuck stopped in front of the wardrobe. Mark swallowed, and tried again. “You don’t have to— If you give me a minute, I’ll get my things and I’ll—”

“You don’t have to, either,” Donghyuck’s voice was soft, but resolute, and Mark’s heart missed a beat. Even sitting on the bed, he still had his back turned, and Mark couldn’t read the lines of Donghyuck’s shoulders nearly as well as he could read his face. Still, it somehow was enough. 

“What?” Mark winced with the way his voice cracked, and hoped Donghyuck didn’t hear it. 

There was a moment of silence, but then Donghyuck sighed, leaning against the headboard and pulling the duvet over his legs. It felt awkward, a silent Donghyuck with clearly something to say, and a fidgeting Mark with a mind so loud he risked not hearing it, though he supposed that awkward was their new normal. 

At last, Donghyuck raised his head and looked over. “This is your room too. I don’t know why you’d leave.”

“Ah,” was the best answer Mark’s brain could conjure, but it was worth seeing the poorly concealed smile on Donghyuck’s face before he once again turned away, properly lying down.

“And when you’re done, can you turn off the light?” 

Brushing his fingers against the old note like a lucky charm, Mark turned off his bed lamp, and had the best sleep he’d had in weeks lulled by Donghyuck’s stable breathing across the room. 

It was an improvement, all things considered. They would no longer try and leave the room the other was in, and would casually talk without hostility, much to the members’ relief. The van rides and practice rooms felt easier to breathe in, and a particular laughter could be heard again on waiting rooms over the sound of blow dryers and the TV. 

It was an improvement, that’s what Mark would say if any of the others outright asked him. It wasn’t like that was his first fight with Donghyuck, and at that point, not even the longest one they’d ever had. Mark knew that this was what the others were most likely focusing on, when they heard Donghyuck bickering with Mark, when they saw Donghyuck link his arm with Mark’s. 

Donghyuck sometimes created illusions so believable, Mark was inclined to fall for them. He probably would, no questions asked, if he didn’t know the other like the back of his own hand. 

So when they would talk in public, Mark could hear the apathy in Donghyuck’s tone. How short and faint his laughter was. Most of all, how few were the words they would exchange when in private — how direct and utilitarian, as if Donghyuck could no longer spare Mark the full scope of his own emotions in objective communication. 

Mark wished he could talk to someone about how, when Donghyuck leaned on him in public, it felt calculated, instead of natural. About how when their skin touched, it wouldn’t last more than a few seconds, and if Mark was the one reaching, Donghyuck would almost imperceptibly recoil. 

He wished he could talk about all of it without sounding like he was going insane. 

It was all very amicable, to onlookers and to Mark himself, but it was laced with an uneasiness characteristic of casual acquaintances that Mark could argue they never were. Not even on day one, Mark had no recollection of there ever being as much emotional distance between him and Donghyuck as there was at the moment. 

With Donghyuck curled up on the couch, snoring softly even with the loud conversations and louder hair appliances, legs thrown over Taeil’s, Mark felt a lump rise in his throat. Besides that one night when Donghyuck allowed Mark back into their room, there hadn’t been one day where he would fall asleep before, or wake up after Mark in the weeks that followed. He would no longer show himself in that state of vulnerability around Mark, but would easily do it around any of the other members, and that felt like nothing, but it also felt like so much, and Mark swallowed down half his water bottle while looking away.

Maybe he was just really going insane.

“Oh, you didn’t raise your arm there,” Mark blurted, unthinking, and felt Donghyuck freeze beside him. 

“Hm?”

“The— uh, about a minute and a half in? I think you didn’t raise your arm,” if Mark wasn’t already sweating from the stage, Donghyuck’s stare would surely make him. 

“I’m pretty sure I didn’t miss anything, though?” Donghyuck’s tone shifted from confused to defensive. 

Mark scratched the back of his neck, fingers tangling on the mic wires. “Ah, you didn’t, not like _miss_ miss, it’s just— a bit off sync?”

“A minute and a half?” came Jungwoo’s voice, eyes still focused on their performance on the screen “Isn’t that my part? Haechan’s in the back row for that. I think it’s fine.”

“I just said that I didn’t—”

“I didn’t mean that, it’s just—”

“Shh! Talk _after_ ,” Jaehyun put a hand on Mark’s shoulder, stepping closer to the TV but away from the speakers as if that would make him hear the performance better. Mark could feel his whole face burn up, and was glad that Donghyuck was no longer looking at him. But they _wouldn’t_ talk about it later, not when it would risk explaining why he was monitoring Donghyuck’s obscure, corner screen fast movements in the back row, instead of himself. 

And he found they wouldn’t need to. The topic didn’t come up again, not during the ride home, not in the dorm. Not even when both were in the van a third time that day, alone, heading to a practice session with Dream. 

Still, Mark lately seemed prone to saying the wrong thing at the wrong time, whether or not they chose to talk about it.

“Here.”

Donghyuck stared at Mark’s outstretched hands. “What’s this?”

“You forgot your jacket,” he cleared his throat “You know how they up the AC in the evening, so.”

“Thought you had left for the day,” Donghyuck tilted his head, but took the jacket from Mark’s hands anyway. 

“Yeah, but just, hm, now.”

Donghyuck stared at Mark, awkward hands not knowing what to do now that we wasn’t holding anything. 

“Huh,” Donghyuck put the jacket on, and Mark almost breathed a sigh of relief “Thanks.”

Some other time, it might have been natural. Donghyuck wouldn’t have thought twice about Mark refusing Taeyong’s offer to order them take out after another full day of practice with Dream without consulting him first. It would be nothing out of the ordinary for Mark to be the one stressed out about their diets like that, or about how much sleep it was healthy for Donghyuck to miss by playing online games well into the night, or to pull Donghyuck aside at every possible practice break to do more choreography talk. 

Donghyuck knew how bad Mark’s nerves would get when they had their schedules full like that, and would usually let him fret freely for the sake of his own peace of mind. 

But that was before Mark had royally fucked it all up by trying to sweep every wrong thing under the rug, and the resulting crack in their friendship took away their habit of being accommodating to each other’s less than perfect quirks, among other things. So when Donghyuck found Mark reorganizing something on what was supposed to be his side of the closet, he didn’t snap, but got very close to. 

“What are you doing?”

Mark jumped, almost dropping what he was holding. Even from the door Donghyuck could see his roommate’s ears turn pink. “Just, I noticed you only have white face towels now, and—” Mark turned around, sheepishly raising two sets of black towels, and pointing to Donghyuck’s fading purple ends. “Figured you might want something more... appropriate to dry that.”

Donghyuck could feel his blood start to boil. It was irrational, but lately most of what Mark Lee did triggered that reaction, and Donghyuck could do very little to suppress it. There was only so much he could do to keep up with the ever changing highs and lows of the person that was supposed to be his best friend while being kept out of the loop like he felt he was. 

Briefly closing his eyes, Donghyuck inhaled and made his way to his own bed, back turned to Mark, and tone dripping venom. “Thanks a lot, _mom_. Not like I ever know how to take care of myself anyway, with anything.”

“Hyuck,” he could hear Mark closing the closet door softly, sounding slightly breathless. “Hyuck, you know that’s not my intention. I’m just, this is just me trying to help. Of course I know you can take care of yourself, I—”

“Well, don’t,” Donghyuck sat up quickly, blood still boiling, but doing his best to not raise his voice “I don’t need you to do _any_ of that Mark. It doesn’t help at all. It feels suffocating, and you should be taking care of _yourself_.”

Donghyuck could see, from the way Mark looked stricken, speechless, that he understood Donghyuck noticed every single little thing he’d been doing the past few weeks. But he meant it, he really meant it, and out of everyone, Mark should be the one who best understood how suffocating it felt being coddled like that. 

Mark lowered his gaze. “Sorry. I’m sorry,” a sigh “You know how... it gets sometimes. I’m sorry. It eases my mind to think I’m helping, but I didn’t know. Sorry.”

Maybe it was the way Mark’s voice faded to a whisper, maybe it was the amount of apologies uttered in a single breath, maybe it was the rising lump in Donghyuck’s throat because _Mark, I need you to talk to me, please talk to me, tell me what’s wrong in a way that we can actually talk about it, please stop keeping me in the dark like this, please talk to me_ — he felt that if he said something now, it would be with the intent to hurt Mark. Donghyuck hastily collected his phone and a charger with shaking hands, missing the right holes of his sandals twice before wearing them properly. 

“Yeah, I _know_ all about it Mark, but I just think,” a breath “I just think it’s really unfair that you expect me to just let you do whatever you want as long as it’s for _your_ own fucking peace of mind only, and I’m just, I’m just expected to _let_ you, and—”

“No, Hyuck, I don’t expect _anything_ ,” Mark’s touch on his wrist burned more than the blood flowing through his body, and Donghyuck stopped before reaching the door. “I’m sorry, I told you I’m sorry! That’s all I can do for now. You told me what was wrong, and I hear you, I hear you and so I’m not gonna do it again, because you let me know that—”

“But you’re not gonna tell _me_ ,” Donghyuck’s voice was a hiss, and Mark’s hand fell, and he couldn’t shake the feeling that Mark was getting away again, hiding again, as even when he reached for Mark just like Mark had just reached for him, he flinched away from Donghyuck’s hands. “You’re not gonna tell me, and I’m gonna be the one having to use a fucking crystal ball while _you_ get to choose waiting for me to spell it out to you when there’s something wrong because you’re too selfish! You’re so fucking selfish, Mark Lee!” Donghyuck’s breaths were getting labored, voice steadily raising so he could still hear himself above the sound of the blood in his ears. “Stop expecting me to be oh so accommodating to you if this is not gonna go both ways!”

Mark looked pale, and Donghyuck knew he probably looked the exact opposite with all the heat under his skin, but if that conversation continued then it would just turn into a repeat of what the past few weeks had been, and Donghyuck had neither the patience nor the heart to go through that again so soon. 

He might have slammed the door with a bit more force than necessary, but the absolute silence Donghyuck found in the living room had probably more to do with his screams than with his treatment of a piece of furniture. He sat down on the couch with a sigh, and Taeyong carefully made his way from the kitchen table to sit between Donghyuck and a frozen Johnny. 

“Do you wanna talk about it?”

“No,” came the definite answer, and Donghyuck winced at the hostility in his own voice, when Taeyong had absolutely nothing to do with his shitty mood, but Taeyong only hummed and crossed his arms, making himself comfortable. 

“You know,” Johnny tried, scratching the back of his neck and refusing to look at Donghyuck “He means no harm. He just thought he was helping.”

“I don’t care about meaning when that’s the result, Johnny,” Donghyuck growled, and Taeyong put a gentle hand on his knee. An inhale, “It’s not even the first time we have so many back to back schedules like that, so that’s not what’s bugging him. I don’t know what he’s trying to overcompensate for when he micromanages me like that, and I honestly can’t care anymore if he keeps acting like that without wanting to talk and sort shit out.”

There was that deafening silence again, but the lump in Donghyuck’s throat didn’t disappear. Everyone in that living room knew that Donghyuck was right, but he didn’t feel any satisfaction from saying all his honest thoughts out loud to someone other than Mark. It almost made him feel worse. 

Yuta put his glass down on the table and cleared his throat. “If you’re so sure there’s something he’s refusing to talk about, maybe you should stop pressing him to do it too.”

“And who exactly is that gonna help?” Donghyuck didn’t mean to sound as sarcastic as he did, but thankfully Yuta just shrugged.

“Even if you’re right about him trying to overcompensate something, you should probably know that acting as stubbornly as he does is not gonna change anything,” Yuta opened the fridge, and Donghyuck almost thought he was looking for a distraction to filter his own words before they started arguing too. “It’s not the first time you two fight over something most likely ridiculous and it’s not gonna be the last time either. You called him selfish, but if you’re dragging this whole thing out on purpose just to get something specific out of him, and making every single other person walk on eggshells around the two of you for another entire fucking month while you’re at it,” Yuta paused, closing the fridge and reaching for a cup “Then you’re really, incredibly selfish too.”

Next to Donghyuck, Johnny and Taeyong seemed like they weren’t even breathing, as if bracing for another screaming match, and that was enough for Donghyuck to hang his head down. If that didn’t prove Yuta’s point, then Donghyuck wasn’t sure what did, and it _was_ really unfair to make the people around him as stressed as he felt just out of spite. 

“You don’t need to worry like that,” his voice was small, and Yuta’s eyes spelled pity, so Donghyuck looked away. “We’re not fighting. It’s just— it’s been a lot. Lately. There’s been no rest. Our minds aren’t in the best place, right now, and he won’t talk to me. But we’re not fighting.”

Yuta silently offered a glass of juice to Donghyuck, and Taeyong moved his hand from Donghyuck’s knee to softly comb the hair on Donghyuck’s nape. He felt himself relax despite the gnawing feeling at the pit of his stomach that Mark was still holed up in their room, with nobody helping ease his nerves like that. Squeezing the glass until his fingertips turned white, Donghyuck tried focusing on the series Johnny put on the TV. 

The week that followed had no major confrontations, and Mark was ready to allow himself to breathe normally again when around Donghyuck. It should all mean that the little storm plaguing the inhabitants of the room at the end of the corridor was finally over, but Mark knew better. Because he knew himself better, and if he had already twice managed to almost irreversibly screw things up just as they seemed to finally get better, then it was just a matter of time until he did it again. It made him restless and jittery, bracing himself for something that he wasn’t sure would even happen.

And he could feel Donghyuck’s worry, too, on the rare occasions when their eyes locked and it felt like the other was about to say something, only to then avert his eyes and leave Mark wondering if he was just imagining it all again. But Donghyuck was perceptive, too perceptive, and had made sure Mark was aware of that just one too many times for him to be as careless around Donghyuck as Donghyuck was apparently waiting for him to be. 

It was easy to get distracted too, at two in the morning in an almost empty practice room, Donghyuck complaining and playing games on his phone while Mark searched for the specific part of the choreography they still hadn’t perfected. 

“I’m telling you, let’s go back, we can’t get anything done at this hour anymore,” Donghyuck whined, head slightly tilted in concentration and eyes glued to the screen. 

“Let me just write this down so we can pick up from it tomorrow,” but no matter how many times Mark replayed their practice, his eyes would stray to Donghyuck’s form, to Donghyuck’s tempo, dissecting every move while trying to distinguish between what was actually Donghyuck’s dancing style, and what could be marked as an area that needed improvement. It played on the screen, and replayed in Mark’s head, every time he let his mind wander.

_It doesn’t help at all. It feels suffocating._

Mark was in desperate need of sleep. However. 

“Actually, you can head back first, I’ll go over some of my parts and—”

“Mark,” and it really should have been Donghyuck’s tone that surprised Mark the most, a casual and fond one he hadn’t heard in what felt like forever, one that made his chest feel tight. But instead it was the proximity of Donghyuck’s voice that made Mark spin around, and to find his roommate close enough to feel the heat from his skin brought all his thoughts to a sudden halt. 

Donghyuck’s eyes were so, so pretty, and for a second Mark felt himself slipping. 

He shot up to his feet, and Donghyuck looked up from his crouch with a confused expression. Mark turned away. “Don’t worry, I’ll be quiet when I get back. I won’t wake you up.”

A sigh, and Donghyuck got up as well, taking Mark’s phone from his hand and pausing the practice video. “I’m tired. You’re tired. You’re very, very tired, Mark, and there’s nothing for you to fix at this hour. Trust me, it’s all in your head,” Donghyuck laughed softly, and extended a hand towards Mark “Maybe if we get back before Jungwoo’s middle of the night snack break, we can raid his stash of imported chocolate?”

Mark stared at Donghyuck’s hand for long enough for his roommate to drop it, heading to the back of the room to finish packing his bag. Mark zipped up his own absentmindedly, following Donghyuck out of the building and into the bus in silence, wondering if Donghyuck really sounded like he was talking about something else entirely, of if the double meanings were all in Mark’s mind. Again. 

It never did Mark any good to be so constantly reminded that, out of all the people around him at all times, Donghyuck was still the one who knew him the best. It was one thing to hear his best friend be so open about the things that bothered him, but it also made him wonder if he was actually hearing everything — made him start second guessing their every interaction, like Donghyuck constantly wanted to say more than he already did. 

Then again, maybe Mark was just projecting. Donghyuck had called him selfish, and maybe he was. Mainly because he was scared to death about what him not being selfish would mean. 

A realization like that shouldn’t have been Mark’s breaking point, but at four in the morning and running at full steam on naps during van rides and wardrobe fittings, practice room too bright and with too many people, Donghyuck’s laugh echoing louder than their song on the speakers, Donghyuck’s attention, Donghyuck’s easy skinship and Donghyuck’s quick witty responses all being triggered by and used on someone else, someone other than Mark, it was all suddenly too much. He was scared and he was selfish, but he had one too many sleepless nights wondering if he was actually losing his mind to be able to come to terms with his own irrationality when the topic was Donghyuck.

So he snapped. 

“Can you focus here?” Mark’s voice bounced off the walls, his glare towards Donghyuck through the mirror leaving no room to wonder who he was talking to. “I’m really fucking tired, and I know you don’t take anything seriously but we won’t be able to do this live if it’s like this.”

Someone stopped the music, and Mark would probably be able to hear each individual breath from everyone in the room if the sound of his own wasn’t already too loud in his ears. 

“Hey man, we’ve got the green light already,” Jeno started, uncertain.

“Yeah, teacher said it’s all good,” Chenle’s voice sounded small, and there was silence once again. For a few seconds, nobody moved, but Mark could see the glances exchanged between the members in the mirror. He couldn’t move either, rooted to the spot and shaking lightly from all the rage he had bottled up throughout the past few months, suddenly hyper aware of the scene he just caused. 

Anger without a specific trigger was a dangerous thing for Mark. It exploded in ugly words falling out of his mouth before he even knew why he was seething, it made him turn the person who was the least deserving of dealing with it into a target. So when Donghyuck finally met Mark’s eyes through the glass, Mark felt cold.

It only took that one moment for all the fire to leave Mark’s body, going as fast as it came. He blushed as the harshness of his words dawned on him, mind going a thousand per hour trying to figure out the best way to apologize. 

Except that Donghyuck’s eyes told him there’d no longer be room for empty apologies. 

No one stopped Donghyuck when he turned on his heels, hastily slinging his backpack over his shoulder and kicking the door open, hinges singing as the knob slammed against the wall. 

Mark felt a tentative hand on his shoulder, followed by Renjun’s voice, a whisper. “Mark, I think we need to talk.”

There was a lot he wanted to say, and a lot that he knew he should hear from Renjun, but Mark could only stare at the still swinging door. 

“Hey, we don’t think you should—” Mark’s hands were shaking as he tried closing his own backpack, running towards the corridor. “Mark!”

“I’m sorry,” he was breathless. His palms were sweaty and he was still shaking and his phone dropped three times on the few steps towards the door. He felt like crying. “I’m sorry I need to—” 

The ride back to the dorm was tortuously slow, the only company for Mark’s distress being the bus driver and the weak billboard lights. It was eerie, a time of the day where it isn’t quite day yet, but also no longer night. Mark wanted to see the city waking up around him, bursts of activity and foreign sounds that could drown the volume in his own head, but everything beyond the bus windows was still and quiet. All he could see was his own reflection, and he stared at it until the face in the glass no longer felt familiar, until the desperate look belonged to someone else. At some point, the bus driver turned off the lights and Mark knew he should get up, but his limbs were heavy and he felt drowsy and nauseous and like everything beyond the opening bus doors were no longer safe. 

He wasn’t even sure that Donghyuck had gone back to the dorms. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Mark knew that if he was in Donghyuck’s shoes, he’d have gone home. That he would be done and over dealing with this childish behavior, and gotten away before it could do any irreversible damage. Before _he_ could any irreversible damage. 

But the thought that his room — their room — would be empty just like the previous month made Mark’s hand hover over the the front door, keys jingling and breath uneven. It wasn’t what he wanted, even when he didn’t know what he wanted, and he was sure Donghyuck was aware of that, he needed Donghyuck to be aware of that. 

He was selfish, so very selfish, because the first thing he felt upon seeing Donghyuck in their room was relief. He thought he was breathing better, but the air coming in was rushed and wrong just like everything in that moment felt, wrong, wrong, _wrong_.

“You got something to say?”

Mark did. He had volumes upon volumes of books filled to the brim with things he wanted to say, hours and days of internal monologues and fights and reflections and there were so many, so many things he wanted to say, but nothing felt appropriate under Donghyuck’s stare, and sorting the words in his mind felt like trying to grasp running water. 

“You know you’re doing it again, right?” Donghyuck’s voice started mild, but there was color raising to his cheeks, and his words got progressively louder. 

“ _What_ is it that you think I’m doing?” It wasn’t what Mark wanted to say. He wanted to apologize and ask for some of Donghyuck’s time to sort out through stuttering tries and choked words all that was going through his head. He wanted his best friend, and he wanted the kid who knew him better than he knew himself to tell him that things were going to be okay. He wanted Donghyuck to pat his back and pretend not to notice his tears and to say that they could make through all of this. Just like he had done to Mark before, about so many things, so many times, but never about something like this. Mark wasn’t even sure he could properly tell Donghyuck what _it_ was. 

But that was an automatic response, so ingrained in his mind after all those years, that such a shift in Donghyuck’s voice meant that they would fight. Mark was there to sincerely apologize for once, but the way his blood ran faster through his veins made him want to rise up to challenge. It was not the time for that, his own clenched fists would tell him, and it should never be, but the look look in Donghyuck’s eyes and the flush on his face made Mark want to retaliate. 

“You’re nitpicking,” Donghyuck stood up from the bed “You’re overbearing, and you’re micromanaging _me_. I couldn’t give less of a fuck about what is it that your struggles make you do, Mark, when you refuse to fucking _talk_ to me,” his steps closer felt dragged. “This is different from the other times, isn’t it? This is not about our schedules. This is not about me having to stick with you for these schedules, it’s not about your shitty sleeping habits and it’s not about feeling burnt out. This is so very much about _you_ , but it’s also somehow about _me_ too, and I can’t fucking breathe because you’re constantly trying to not let me!”

Mark could feel heat spreading down his neck. “You done psychoanalyzing me?”

“Fuck off,” Donghyuck’s voice was a hiss, and Mark stepped closer. 

“Fuck off? You’re the one screaming at me!” Donghyuck flinched, and Mark’s stomach dropped, but the words wouldn’t stop tumbling out of his mouth. “What the hell do you know about it anyway?”

“Nothing! I don’t know _shit_ , Mark Lee, I have no clue! But whatever it is, you’ve been taking it out on me, and instead of trying to fix it, you’ve become really fucking insufferable! I’m not your fucking punching bag!” 

“You think it’s up to me to fix it?” it suddenly felt like a competition of whose voice got to be the loudest, and if Mark wasn’t seeing red, he’d be thinking about how they had not only probably woken up everyone in the dorm but probably their neighbors too. But he didn’t care, couldn’t care about anything that wasn’t Donghyuck, and making Donghyuck feel just as shattered as he was. He wanted to be cruel. “Do you hear yourself? _Me_ fixing it? You’re so goddamn arrogant, Donghyuck. Has it ever crossed your mind that _you_ are the fucking problem? And that maybe you have always been?”

Mark was heaving, and from this distance, he could see the light changing in Donghyuck’s eyes as they became teary. His throat closed up, and he might as well be the one on the verge of crying because how could everything possibly be so fucking _wrong_. 

A screaming Donghyuck was a Donghyuck that still cared to listen what the other person had to say, but an angry Donghyuck driven almost to the point of tears was a nasty, heartless creature. And this one had a reason. 

Mark’s hands reached up to cup Donghyuck’s face faster than his brain could process, but Donghyuck slapped them away, pushing Mark square in the chest with enough force to send him stumbling back until his head hit the wall. 

“Don’t touch me,” Donghyuck was shaking “Don’t fucking touch me, Mark Lee. Don’t talk to me, don’t come near me,” there was an urgent knock to their door, right next to Mark, but neither of them moved. 

“Hey, just now we heard something loud, is the door unlocked?” Doyoung’s voice was muffled, urgent, the quick knocking in tempo with the dull ache on the back of Mark’s head. 

Stubborn, still so stubborn, Mark took a step closer, and in a moment he was once again slammed against the wall, heat blooming on his jaw, Donghyuck’s other hand crumpling the collar of his shirt. 

“ _Don’t_ come near me. I don’t want to hear your fucking voice. Sort your issues out by yourself. And if you think _I’m_ the problem, well too fucking bad,” Donghyuck released the collar of Mark’s shirt just as Doyoung stepped into the room, followed by Johnny. 

Mark could feel the exchanged glances and the weight of a glare, or maybe two. But he could only look at Donghyuck, and Donghyuck was no longer looking at him. 

Johnny put a hand on Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Mark wanted to snap, _don’t touch him_. But unlike with Mark, Donghyuck didn’t slap Johnny’s hand off, didn’t throw Johnny against the wall, didn’t grab Johnny by his collar or punch him in the face with the strength of a person who’d been planning to do it for a while.

And when Doyoung’s hand rested on the back of his neck, Mark wished it was Donghyuck’s. 

“We need to talk. Hm?” Johnny’s voice was low, hand still on Donghyuck’s shoulder, and Donghyuck silently let himself be steered out of the room. Mark could only look straight ahead, Doyoung’s fingers making soft circles on his nape as Johnny closed the door. 

“Does it hurt?” for a moment Mark didn’t answer, puzzled by the question, until Doyoung’s fingers crept up and he flinched. 

“No,” Doyoung didn’t look convinced, but it was the truth. Mark’s flinch had more to do with remembering the feeling of Donghyuck pushing him away than with the dull ache on his jaw. “No, it’s just— it doesn’t hurt.”

Doyoung hummed, lightly patting the back of Mark’s head still. “I thought it’d gotten better, between you two,” he said after a moment of silence.

“Never really felt like it if I’m honest,” Mark frowned at the immediate relief saying that sentence out loud brought him. He sighed, shoulders dropping, and Doyoung sat on the edge of his bed, tapping the space beside him. 

“Wanna be honest with me then?”

Mark closed his eyes briefly, still basking on that feeling of relief, in preparation for the lies he’d have to tell Doyoung. 

“Yeah, I do.”

And he wanted to. He wanted to be honest with Doyoung, sitting by his side with a comforting hand on his knee when it was not even six in the morning yet. He wanted to be honest with Taeyong, eyes too big, too expressive, too concerned, following his every movement in the room. He wanted to be honest with their manager, and their manager’s manager, and all of their staff, who became either wary of him, or had to berate him with some vague, frustrating reasoning because none of them really understood what had happened.

Mostly, he wanted to be honest with Jaehyun, using his day off to move his belongings to the places where Donghyuck’s used to be in the room. Mark wanted to say something that would make his new roommate feel like there was a meaning behind all of this, that Mark wouldn’t survive another day so close to something so irreversibly broken. 

But Jaehyun was silent throughout the whole ordeal, carefully arranging his clothes and occasionally asking Mark to skip songs from the playlist they’d chosen. Mark had no doubt that Donghyuck had confided everything to Johnny since the first afternoon, months before, and that’s why it had been so easy to request for a change in roommates. Maybe Jaehyun had heard something during the days Donghyuck crashed in his and Johnny’s room, or maybe he hadn’t — and Mark wasn’t sure whether Jaehyun was staying quiet out of consideration, of if he too thought that Mark had utterly fucked things up, and thought he was better off not talking about it. 

Too accustomed to dissect every look and every interaction with his previous roommate, it took Mark around a week to get used to Jaehyun’s presence. It took him a week of Donghyuck getting permission to stay with family instead of in the dorm, a week of separate van and bus rides, a week of packed schedules and all of them including Donghyuck only for it to feel like Donghyuck wasn’t even there. For it to feel like, for Donghyuck, _Mark_ wasn’t even there. 

It took a week for Mark to internalize all that went wrong, and to break down. 

He supposed he’d be quite the sight to anyone who entered the room, curled up on the floor, rocking back and forth as he tried his best to suppress the sounds of his sobs, hands clasped against his forehead as if on a prayer. It had been a very, very long time since Mark last felt this desperate about anything, each shallow intake of breath racking an ugly sound from his chest, eyes squeezed shut but with tears still falling. 

Maybe it was a blessing in disguise that he was no longer sharing a room with Donghyuck. Maybe it was better that he was away from the dorm, or Mark would have kicked the door to Johnny’s room open and clung to Donghyuck until he could stop crying or fell asleep from crying too much. Whatever came first. 

The thought also brought back the memory of Donghyuck pushing Mark away, of _don’t come near me_ and _don’t touch me_ , and Mark tangled his fingers in his hair like he wanted to split his head in half. 

He felt silly and childish and utter ridiculous curled against the bed frame, still in practice clothes and with snot all over his face. It felt like Donghyuck was a limb that was painfully torn away and Mark was still bleeding. 

He just wanted his best friend, he just wanted it back to when Donghyuck was still his best friend. 

Jaehyun said nothing that night, not to the sight of Mark’s head fully under the duvet, not to the soft sniffles Mark knew were audible even across the room. Jaehyun said nothing on the first night, nor on the second night, but by the end of the second week, he paused by Mark’s desk before putting down a glass of water.

“Is that for me? Unprompted? Wow man, I’m touched,” Mark’s tone was playful, and he was sure that Jaehyun would answer just in kind, before he looked up from his phone to see Jaehyun’s eyes locked onto something else. 

“Did Haechannie put this here before he left?”

Oh. 

“Ah, no,” Mark scratched the back of his head, busying himself for a few seconds by drinking the water. “He— this is, hm, it’s an old thing,” he put down the glass in front of the lamp, half covering the post-it. Jaehyun looked back to Mark for a long moment. “I just— haven’t even used my desk, I mean lately, didn’t get a chance to clean things up. Gonna declutter and get these old papers out tomorrow.”

Jaehyun pursed his lips, still looking at Mark, one hand resting near the glass of water — near the lamp, near the fading yellow paper with tilted handwriting. A sigh, and Jaehyun pushed himself off of Mark’s desk. “If you say so.”

And though that was the extent of any commentary Jaehyun would make regarding the entire situation, Mark was silently glad for it. He had enough already to deal with the news that Donghyuck would be back the next morning, without the reminder of a flimsy, pathetic keepsake glued to the base of his bedside lamp. 

There was a large breakfast organized in the living room that Saturday, table filled with things Donghyuck’s aunt had sent them. It made for a bubbly morning, all of them constantly walking in and out of the kitchen to snatch a pastry or two or five. And still, Mark barely caught a glimpse of Donghyuck. 

With only one too many toasts with homemade jam one could eat, Mark thought that maybe him lingering in the kitchen for so long was the reason why Donghyuck was holed up in Johnny’s room, under the pretense of unpacking. With a resigned sigh, Mark stood up from the table and announced out loud that he’d be cleaning his side of the room until lunch, and had to stop himself from crying when he heard Donghyuck’s voice in the corridor almost the very same second he shut his own bedroom door. 

Picking up his phone with shaking hands, Mark sent a quick message to Renjun, saying he wouldn’t be able to make it to dinner with Dream after all. When for once Renjun’s answer came back with no follow up questions, he wondered if maybe that meant he was finally doing the right thing. 

Putting as much time and distance between them as possible should be helpful, Donghyuck thought, but telling their manager he’d be the only one going to the Dream dorm that evening made his chest feel tight.

Any other time, he’d open their bedroom door, give Mark the finger and turn to leave before hearing stuttering insults and clumsy steps as Mark would struggle to fetch a beanie, a jacket and his phone at the same time. He’d laugh and hold Mark’s wallet and possibly also Mark’s left shoe as they’d wait for the elevator to arrive. They would play one and then three and then five rounds of rock-paper-scissors to decide who’d get the aux chord in the van, just for Donghyuck to still lose and complain until Mark relented. Sit three people apart at the Dream dorm kitchen or at a restaurant but still exchange bites of their meal. Bicker over who’d get the couch and who’d get the futon on a free day, sleep peacefully to the sound of Mark’s playlists in the van on a not so free day. 

It felt like a really long time since things had last been that normal, and only when faced with the abrupt changes did Donghyuck see just how different things could become in a span of a few months.

Staring at the closed door at the end of the corridor, Donghyuck shook his head and followed the manager out. 

Rooming with Jaehyun was sudden, but not unwelcome, and Mark embraced the new calm and silent atmosphere of his room fairly quickly. There was something incredibly trusting about Jaehyun’s whole demeanor, and because he tended to listen more than speak, Mark somehow found himself knowing of most news and changes to their schedule ahead of everyone else, thanks to his new roommate. On most days, he found it hilarious that post-breakfast Jaehyun sounded like the morning paper, and thoroughly enjoyed every minute of every report. 

_On most days_ , he repeated to himself, because Jaehyun’s habit turned out to really be a blessing and a curse. 

There was a loud sound, followed by Doyoung’s exasperated scream of _Donghyuck can you please shut up_ and Johnny’s _this won’t change_ , and Mark snickered. He’d been folding the last t-shirt to put in his suitcase when Jaehyun scoffed as well. 

“Guess he found out too,” Jaehyun was lounging on the bed, suitcase ready since the day before, but something in his tone made Mark carefully put the t-shirt down. 

“What do you mean?”

“Ah,” Jaehyun looked up from his phone, expression what Mark came to understand as _I should’ve probably not told you what I just did_ , and for a moment felt like he should be sitting down to hear that one. “About the hotel arrangements, and all.”

Mark sat down. “The hotel... arrangements?”

A nod. “Mhm. Manager said you two were gonna be rooming together because of the dry mini bar policy for minors,” Jaehyun turned his attention back to his phone. “And I mean, it’s been what, weeks since things got quiet again? Guess he figured you two were over trying to kill each other.”

Mark hummed, because, fair. It had been sometime since he’d last felt strange being in the same closed space as Donghyuck, and they could probably manage a couple of nights within six feet of each other. Though it might feel awkward at first, considering the fact that they still were not exactly on speaking terms, Mark figured they might really just pass out after the concert, and no speaking would be needed at all. 

Satisfied with his own conclusions, Mark hummed again and nodded to himself, going back to making space for the toiletries bag under folded pants, and closing the suitcase. His movements were all on autopilot as he distantly wondered where all that calmness had come from. 

He supposed he should be feeling something else hearing news like that, but there was only hollow surprise. Donghyuck’s hostile antics had long subdued, and so Mark’s angry knee-jerk responses had died down as well. They both had lately found a somewhat balanced truce, and were careful enough to maintain basic civility around each other. It was no longer some flimsy resolve based on vague reasoning, and maybe a punch was all it took to put things back to where they supposedly should have always been. 

Sometimes Mark could still feel the phantom of Donghyuck’s hand on his collar, Donghyuck’s hot breath on his face. 

But then he could also hear _don’t touch me_ and _don’t talk to me_ , and paired up with Doyoung’s loud complaints down the corridor and Jaehyun’s piece of news, Mark’s mood soured. 

Donghyuck didn’t talk to him on the way to the airport, nor in the airport itself, and it made Mark wonder whether they really had reached some kind of balance after all. _It would be kind of cruel_ , Mark thought, if once again, all the subtle changes in their friendship — could it still be called that? — weren’t noticeable to Donghyuck. But Donghyuck still wouldn’t meet his eyes, and when Mark’s stomach tangled in knots, he wished he could be able to feel only hollow surprise again. 

Mark was in a mood, and it was an unspoken consensus between all of them to never bring it up. Donghyuck had chosen to ignore that a couple of times in a row, and just look where it had gotten them. He wondered if third time was the charm, when he could feel Mark’s heavy gaze on the back of his head all the way to the airport. This was exactly why Donghyuck chose to ride on separate vans lately. 

And precisely because of that single broken rule, all of Mark’s brooding silences and deep frowns started to somehow be equated to Donghyuck in the past few months. If Donghyuck wanted to shake Mark and ask him to snap out of it — whatever _it_ was — that was mostly so the others could stop acting like he was the cause of every single one of Mark’s temper tantrums ever. 

So he didn’t even let Taeil open his mouth before hissing. “I swear to God that whatever it is, it’s not because of me.”

Taeil hummed. “Didn’t say anything.”

“Yeah, like you weren’t about to,” Donghyuck scoffed, adjusting the straps of his backpack. 

“If you’re so quick with knowing what people want to say, how come you two are still fighting?”

“We’re not—” but it was the look on Jungwoo’s face that made Donghyuck’s ears go pink, because, why could they never come to _his_ defense instead of Mark’s? “Listen I don’t know why you guys are always so dead-fucking-set on everything being my fault but I _swear_ his mood swings don’t have anything to do with me, and I’ve got no clue why he’s brooding.”

“You mean you didn’t talk to Mark about the room arrangements?” Came Jaehyun’s voice from beside Taeil, and Donghyuck came to a halt, making the other three stop as well. 

“What do you mean, room arrangements?” Taeil and Jaehyun exchanged a glance, and Jungwoo snorted, patting Donghyuck’s shoulder before jogging towards Doyoung. “No, really, what does that mean, and why does it look like all of you know about it already?”

To Jaehyun’s defense, he did blush, hand gingerly raising to pinch the top of his own left ear as he stalled before answering Donghyuck. “Well, I mean, didn’t Johnny tell you about it already? I really thought he did.”

“Tell me _what_ ,” though Donghyuck could feel it in the pit of his stomach already, and just wanted to hear the confirmation through Jaehyun’s lips. He adjusted his backpack again. “What was Johnny supposed to tell me?”

“Oh, hm, not that he was the one supposed to tell you or anything, but it’s kind of...”

“Common sense?” Taeil intervened. “Yeah, like. You two are the only minors.”

“We mean, minors in the U.S., so, uh, American dry hotel mini bars and all,” Taeil nodded to that, and Donghyuck looked from Jaehyun, to Taeil, to Jaehyun again. 

“So, what? He’s my roommate again?” Donghyuck huffed “What does that gotta do with his shitty mood, what does that gotta do with _me_?”

Jaehyun looked away, uncomfortable, but Taeil kept looking at Donghyuck with pursed lips, and Donghyuck knew he wanted to mention something about the previous months. And Donghyuck wanted to hear it, was ready to retaliate and pick a whole new fight, but then he could feel Mark’s crumpled shirt in his hands, and hear the sound Mark’s head made against the wall. He could feel Johnny’s hand on his shoulder, he could remember how cold the living room felt. So he looked away. 

“Geez, you almost make it sound like I’m some public hazard. We’re not fighting, and unlike what you all seem to think, I don’t plot the next time I’m gonna punch him every time we’re in the same space. Relax. We’re good.”

But Taeil kept staring, and Donghyuck was on the verge of saying something mean about it, so he just closed his eyes for a moment and nodded to both of them before heading to the boarding gate. 

Ever since the first disagreement that got Donghyuck sleeping in Johnny’s and Jaehyun’s room, he felt that if all of them were suddenly forced to take sides, they would all side with Mark. For a while, it felt like it was because Mark had actually told them why he had been so pissed at Donghyuck in the first place, enough to start this whole thing, and it only served to make Donghyuck even more mad. Why the hell would Mark tell _literally_ everyone else and their mothers about some inexcusable faux pas Donghyuck had committed, but not Donghyuck himself? The thought sat wrong in Donghyuck’s stomach for days, until he saw how hard Mark was trying to make amends, and how all of them kept genuinely asking what was wrong, as if nobody knew as well.

It was all short lived, though, specially when Donghyuck made the dumb decision to turn the disagreement into something physical. Then, he didn’t have to wonder if everyone else was taking Mark’s side — his answer was already in the forty minute lecture Johnny gave him at five in the morning, not once asking whether he was fine or not; it was in how Jaehyun suggested to _Donghyuck_ that they changed roommates, _before someone got seriously hurt_ ; in the way Taeyong relayed the story to their managers, and all of a sudden Donghyuck was _highly encouraged_ to spend a week out of the dorm, like a stupid high schooler getting suspended. 

He could hear it in Jaemin’s voice, joking about how Mark was probably not coming for dinner again because Donghyuck was there, and in Renjun’s laughter saying he’d got a text from Mark confirming it. And maybe his group mates were not even aware of how mean it all sounded, but with each person’s flippant commentary about how the situation was somehow his fault, Donghyuck felt as if getting isolated, a growing distance not just between him and Mark but also between _him_ and _everyone else_. 

From what he could see, nobody in the entire week he was away had the grand idea of talking to Mark about the whole thing, like Johnny had to Donghyuck that morning, like Taeyong had later that night, like Jeno had texted him three days later about it. It felt like everyone had assumed everything was somehow Donghyuck’s fault, and it was also on him not having arranged a truce with Mark, as if it was solely his responsibility to resolve the situation. Even if it was visible that out of all their previous ugly fights, this one seemed different in every aspect. Even if _I have not a single fucking clue what this situation is_ , he’d told Johnny then. 

Not like Johnny believed, anyway.

Still, everybody accommodated Mark like he was the only one in pain, and every time they made plans without inviting Donghyuck so Mark didn’t have to be the once cancelling, Donghyuck lost hours of sleep. All he’d gotten was, on one particularly bad night, Doyoung softly — and maybe absentmindedly — singing him to sleep in the living room. No one commented on Donghyuck’s prolonged silences, on his new sullen behavior.

It felt like they were all tuned to Mark’s emotions, to its highs and its lows, but nobody asked about how Donghyuck was dealing with it. Nobody asked _him_ how it felt to be slowly, and then so quickly, losing his own best friend. 

And perhaps what hurt more, was that this time, Mark didn’t ask either. 

Donghyuck would be the bigger person, though. With all else seeming to have failed spectacularly, his last resort was to wait. To wait it out, whatever _it_ was. 

Sure, that had been a new record for both Mark and Donghyuck and their metaphorical friendship book, but there had to be an ending to it. Either in the form of a resolution, or in the form of closure, and Donghyuck was willing to wait. Perhaps all Mark ever really needed was time, time to sort out whatever was going in his head, and sometime soon he’d open up about it. Donghyuck was sure of it, sure that out of all of their hiccups throughout all those years, that they would get through it this time too.

Though it felt great on theory, having Mark run away from their hotel room before Donghyuck could even have the chance of striking up a conversation, made reality just a tad bit pessimistic. 

_I swear he did_ , Donghyuck would text Jeno, skeptical emojis coming in response to Donghyuck’s choice of words. From having stayed exact two feet away from Donghyuck on stage at all times, to requesting to ride in different vans to the hotel, to having barely muttered a response to Donghyuck’s question of who would shower first, to booking it down the corridor in pajamas, hair still completely wet, he could only describe what Mark Lee was doing as _running away_. 

The hot shower water did little to help with Donghyuck’s mood, when the entire time under the stream was spent creating dialogues and argument scenarios for when Mark started talking to him again. 

It’s not like Mark could spend the whole night running either — Donghyuck could bet money on how none of the others would willingly share their hotel twin sized beds just because Mark was scared of being near Donghyuck for a whole night again. Mark’s phone was still over his suitcase, screen lighting up sporadically, and Donghyuck was extremely tempted to check whether the password remained unchanged. 

With a long sigh, he plopped down on the bed, droplets of water staining the sheets and dampening the collar of his pajamas. It was a little past eleven, and not late enough for anybody to kick Mark out of their rooms yet, he figured. Unless... but no, Mark’s phone was still there, wallet right next to it, and he’d need permission from their manager to book another room alone. A permission that would surely be denied. If he put it in the company’s bill, that was, but if Mark was using his personal card, then maybe he...

But that was ridiculous. But then it suddenly was half past eleven, and then minutes to midnight, and Donghyuck’s hair was almost fully dry and Mark still wasn’t back. It was ridiculous, but the second hotel card wasn’t there, and maybe Donghyuck should just go to sleep without passing the bolt on the door, and Mark would surely be back eventually. Probably. Most likely. 

Donghyuck eyed the lit up screen of the offending phone, and sighed to himself again. Things hadn’t been great but they were _fine_ , he was living, he was coping, and Mark Lee had finally been pushed to the back of his mind as of late, but this. This forced, not quite proximity, but physical closeness that only made the changes in their dynamics even more obvious — Donghyuck wasn’t sure how to deal with that. He’d tried before, and though there’s much to be said about intention, between punches and screaming matches, maybe some things were never meant to stay the same. 

After all, Mark had been the one pushing him away from the very beginning — Mark had been the one to choose silence and distance and to put a dent in their friendship, one that started to look irreparable long ago. All Donghyuck could ever do was give him space to talk about things out of his own volition, but that had proven useless, much like Donghyuck _not_ giving Mark enough space. So they were in a standstill. 

And Donghyuck was coping with that development, he really was. All he asked for now was to be given the same space he gave Mark in the very beginning, but instead was met with contempt and silence and the best he could do for his own sanity was to just _give up_ on it. So he did. He did, he really did, but Mark just had to go and _run away_ , like some ornery little kid, and they we’re abroad, for goodness sake, where could have he gone in his pajamas and hotel slippers after a whole concert? It was past midnight and Donghyuck was pacing up and down in their small room. 

Face heating up, Donghyuck unlocked his phone to call Doyoung, or Taeil, or any of his last contacts, honestly, and grabbed Mark’s things, marching towards the door. But his hands were shaking and the call wasn’t connecting and the door was heavy and his own phone was falling on the carpeted corridor floor, and so was his room key, and Mark’s things were on the ground, and really, Donghyuck should just head back inside the room, because _fuck everything_. Even if he left all of Mark’s belongings in the corridor he would probably be relieved to not need to go inside a room with _Donghyuck_ in just to get them anyway. But with one look to the scattered accessories and possibly cracked phone screen, maybe he should first just breathe. 

So Donghyuck sat down cross legged on the threshold, focusing on the cold feeling of the room’s linoleum on his left leg, and the raggedness of the carpet under his right leg, and slowly grounded himself again. Cancelling the third call to Taeil in a row, Donghyuck picked up the things strewn on the corridor. 

He supposed that, in the very least, after his sudden burst of anger and the jelly-like sensation it left on his bones, he would be able to sleep fast and peacefully. But as soon as Donghyuck put the last scattered bills inside Mark’s wallet again, he almost let everything in his hands slip a second time, and slowly let the door close behind himself. Carefully placing the items on top of Mark’s bed, Donghyuck’s movements back towards his own were robotic. 

He sat down and stared ahead unseeingly, the only thing in his mind being the crumpled, old piece paper that had been inside Mark’s wallet. His own handwriting, done in a rush but with a smiley face decorating the exclamation point. 

_Hyung, I just know we can make through it_ was what he’d said, _don’t be cheesy_ was what Mark had replied, holding his hand with a death grip. Donghyuck wanted to tell Mark that he should first stop holding someone’s hand if he was going to say that something was cheesy, but instead only tightened his own grip. He had thought of saying something to lighten the mood, like how their busy schedules meant that they were also getting that busy pay, or commenting on how funny Mark’s nose scrunches were when he was crying like that, but the last time Mark had cried over stress and thinking he was not good enough, Donghyuck managed to start a fight instead of properly consoling him — so that time, he’d endure Mark’s uncomfortably tough grip in silence, awkwardly patting his back until he was done.

Mark didn’t need consoling, Donghyuck knew that. There wasn’t much, if anything, he could say in the moment that would ease the burden in Mark’s mind. But he needed Mark to know, needed Mark to understand that they had made it this far together, and that they would forever make it through any tough times together, and that was unchanging, even when Mark’s mind went on overdrive and he suddenly started believing he didn’t deserve all of his opportunities or the good things that happened to him. Except that Donghyuck wasn’t the best with words, and Mark wasn’t the best at receiving the words that Donghyuck wanted him to hear, so he just stayed. At some point, Mark had either fallen asleep from crying, or finally calmed down enough and just needed silence, but Donghyuck still didn’t let go of his hand. 

When morning came, he woke up alone in their room, a single sticky note on top of his unused bed. The _thank you, always_ Mark had written made Donghyuck’s face heat up, a feeling quickly replaced by concern and uneasiness, because it still felt like Mark didn’t quite get it. It was only three words, but to Donghyuck they seemed more apologetic than thankful, and crumpling the paper in his hands, he felt heat back on his face for an entirely different reason. 

After breaking the lead tip of his mechanical pencil three times — and consequently ruining three different sticky notes — Donghyuck uncapped one of Mark’s pens and balled up the pieces of ruined paper while jotting down a fourth note. He pasted the post-it on the trackpad of Mark’s laptop, closing the lid with a bit more force than strictly necessary. He felt stupid and Mark would probably laugh at him and call him cheesy again, but it was really fucking _infuriating_ , the way Mark would choose to believe the negative voices in his head instead of believing in _Donghyuck_ , for goodness sake. Standing in front of the desk for an entire minute, he opened the laptop and hastily added an exclamation point with a smiley face, and stood there, fingertips white against the back of the swiveling chair, before muttering a low _fuck it_ and closing the laptop lid with a snap. 

And for the following days, Mark not only looked calm but also somehow mellow, smiling when as much as near Donghyuck, talking each other’s ears off late at night and being berated during make-up and hair in the morning. He had felt inexplicably giddy, basking on the silly but pleasant feeling that every day then suddenly felt like a sleepover, even though his best friend had already been his roommate multiple times throughout the years. It was probably because Donghyuck felt like he’d been a major player in helping his best friend finally overcome some complex and uncomfortable feelings about himself, but every time Mark looked at him — a number that suddenly felt like had a sharp increase — Donghyuck somehow felt his heart loop and his throat go dry, so he started making faces at Mark in response. Faces to which Mark would look down and laugh softly, and somehow that response did even worse things to Donghyuck’s stomach. 

Maybe Mark’s stress was somehow actually airborne and had passed to him, and Donghyuck should go see a doctor, or something. 

It only took a couple more days for Donghyuck to realize what kind of heart and stomach loops should actually warrant a visit to the doctor, though. And he could remember, very clearly, the way Mark was sat across from him on the kitchen table, even if he couldn’t remember what they were talking about. What Donghyuck did remember was suddenly catching Mark’s eyes for a long moment, like had become usual, and making another funny face at him, before focusing back on his breakfast and waiting for his roommate’s laughter as a reply. Except that Mark had stood still that time, and when Donghyuck raised his head again, Mark had gone pale, and Donghyuck’s stomach felt uncomfortable in a way much different than how it had started feeling around his roommate, that had nothing to do with food. 

That morning, Mark stood up abruptly, chair scraping loudly against the floor. With his breakfast unfinished on the table, muttered something about feeling unwell, and closed their bedroom door with a bang, leaving an extremely confused Donghyuck staring at the empty chair across from him. 

Donghyuck had singled out that moment as somehow the beginning of everything, even if back then both Jeno and Renjun were certain he was just imagining things. But Mark began to feel distant. At first it just felt like they were talking less, but with Mark constantly complaining about being too tired, Donghyuck just let it go. Then it felt like Mark started to purposefully keep some physical distance between them, and soon enough it felt like they were using their shared room in turns. It wasn’t long before Mark started answering Donghyuck’s questions and comments with a snarky bite so uncharacteristic of him — of them — and even less before Donghyuck started to respond in kind.

Shock had turned into confusion, which shifted to irritability, and by the time it turned into anger, it felt like something had broken between them. He felt as if running away from something major when unrolling a futon and announcing he’d be crashing with Johnny and Jaehyun for a while, but Donghyuck also felt he’d cry if he heard Mark sound so unlike _Mark_ sounded to him one more time. So he would take himself out of the picture, and wait for Mark’s sudden bitterness to fizzle out.

But then Mark too seemed to be waiting for something to pass that he was telling no one about. 

It was awkward and tiring and Donghyuck began to feel like he was always having to somehow dance around Mark and Mark’s emotions and mood swings, and not once it felt like his roommate cared about the draining mental and physical gymnastics needed for that. But then again, Mark had made it verbally clear that Donghyuck was the problem, so why should he care. 

And it would already have been tough enough, to get over hearing something like that from his best friend, if they had cut all personal ties completely and remained simple coworkers. But Mark had cursed, screamed, ignored and isolated Donghyuck, just for him to also go around looking miserable when Donghyuck got mad, just for him to not punch back, just for him to apparently carry in his fucking wallet a piece of Donghyuck at all times. 

None of that made any sense, it never really did, and Donghyuck was just about done trying to understand. 

Grabbing the room key and pulling the hood of his sweatshirt up, Donghyuck went for some fresh air.

When Johnny and Yuta kicked Mark out of their room, he supposed almost two in the morning was an hour as safe as any to face Donghyuck. Trying to be the quietest he’s ever been while unlocking the door and tiptoeing inside, it took him a few moments to notice that the bed by the window was actually empty. And so was the bathroom. Mark felt an uneasy feeling settle in his stomach when he noticed the second room card was gone, too. 

Had Donghyuck gone to one of the others’ room? Were they reverting to when they’d take turns using the room, only being present when the other wasn’t there? Somewhere in his mind he realized it felt incredibly hypocritical of him to be this upset at Donghyuck for doing the very thing he’d been doing the past few hours, hiding in Johnny’s and Yuta’s hotel room, but the thought of the past five months repeating themselves made his chest constrict. Mark cleared his throat, suddenly unable to form a single coherent thought. 

He had planned how to handle the situation down to a T. Thought of multiple pre-made answers and scenarios in which every single one of them would be needed. Had argued with Donghyuck in his head at least thirty different times, in preparation for the meek hours they would have to spend alone together in a room. All for, suddenly, Donghyuck not even be there. 

Mark figured he should feel somewhat relieved, not having to put any of those preparations into play, but all he could manage was to try smothering his own nonsensical disappointment and hurt, and wonder where Donghyuck could be. 

But there was — was that his phone and wallet? And why would they be out of the — oh. Mark’s blood ran cold at the sight in front of him. The yellow, fading piece of paper was out, right next to his things, and Mark’s breathing was suddenly shallow. There were slight tremors in his hands as he picked the sticky note up, a growing ringing sound in his ears. He didn’t hear the door closing behind him, but the slurred voice was grounding. 

“Maaark,” Donghyuck stumbled while trying to take off his shoes, and Mark had little time to let his mind catch up with his eyes before Donghyuck threw both arms around his neck. “Thought you weren’t gonna come back,” the whisper was muffled against Mark’s neck, and Donghyuck hiccuped. 

Mark frowned, trying to push the sluggish body some inches away. “Are you...?”

Donghyuck giggled, head lolling back with an uncomfortable crack, and hiccuped again. “Illie hyung isn’t gonna be missing his ID,” a hiccup “‘Til tomorrow? I think,” his head lolled forward, smile bright and eyes slightly unfocused. Close, too close, way too close. _Oh my God_ , Mark thought, or perhaps said out loud, as Donghyuck bursted in giggles again. 

“Hold on,” Mark tried to pry himself out of Donghyuck’s arms “Wait, sit here for a bit, I’ll get you some water, I’ll—”

“No,” Donghyuck held on tighter, burying his head in the crook of Mark’s neck again, and Mark was just about short-circuiting. “Please don’t go,” sounded smaller than if he’d whispered it, and Mark was breathless. 

“Hyuck, hey, Hyuck, I’m just—”

“Don’t leave me again,” a hiccup. Mark froze on the spot for a moment, and he was about to try making Donghyuck sit down and force him to drink a gallon of orange juice or take a cold shower, but then he felt it. He felt Donghyuck slightly shaking in his arms, felt Donghyuck’s balled fists of the back of his t-shirt. Felt the dampness on the base of his neck, and the droplets running down to his clavicle. Felt the series of hiccups that morphed into sobs on his skin, and how labored Donghyuck’s breath was, unmoving. “Don’t leave, Mark. Stop leaving me,” Donghyuck’s fists clenched and unclenched on Mark’s t-shirt “Please.”

And maybe it was a good thing that Mark couldn’t properly find his voice at the moment, or he would promise a thousand times to not leave Donghyuck’s side ever again. But even with his mouth open, no sounds could get past the lump in his throat, so Mark fell silent again, burying his face against Donghyuck hair, and soothingly running his hands down Donghyuck’s back. 

“I’m sorry,” Donghyuck’s voice sounded so, so broken, and Mark shut his eyes, holding him tighter. “I won’t make you talk about it anymore.”

Mark cleared his throat. “Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay,” he’d taken to softly rock Donghyuck side to side, as if trying to calm down a baby, though at that point he wasn’t sure whether that was for Donghyuck’s sake or for his own. “Everything is fine,” he patted Donghyuck’s hair, and there were more hiccups. 

“I’m so tired, Mark. I hate being alone, I hate being alone so much. I’m so tired of it,” as he spoke, Donghyuck’s hold got more lax, as if embodying the tiredness he was talking about. Mark kept them there, unmoving, until Donghyuck’s breath began to sound more stable. Then he slowly pushed an unprotesting Donghyuck to sit down, to lie down. His eyes were puffy, and there were blotches of red on his nose and cheeks, and he let go of the back of Mark’s t-shirt to latch onto Mark’s hands. 

Mark wasn’t doing much thinking besides trying to soothe Donghyuck, so when their eyes met and Donghyuck softly squeezed his hands, Mark just joined him. 

It felt like deja-vu, them lying face to face and holding hands, at some ungodly time of the night, one with tears on his face, the other utterly silent. It was just that, when Mark imagined himself paying Donghyuck’s favors back, he didn’t really envision being the reason Donghyuck was upset in the first place. 

Though Mark had felt an unsettling numbness since Donghyuck entered the room, it somehow was only when he reached out to wipe a tear from Donghyuck’s cheek, and Donghyuck flinched, that he felt a painful pressure in his heart. Mark swallowed and tried lowering his hand again, and Donghyuck didn’t flinch a second time. Instead, he sniffled and placed a hand right under Mark’s jaw.

“I’m sorry for punching you. Before.”

Mark hummed, placing his own hand over Donghyuck’s. He belatedly thought that, under normal, sober circumstances, he would probably have never survived a situation like that. But Donghyuck’s eyes looked like they were struggling to stay open, and he still softly sniffled from time to time, and that was all Mark could focus on. 

“I’m sorry too. For everything,” and this time it was Donghyuck who hummed, quietly, before closing his eyes. 

Mark allowed himself a moment to take everything in, as Donghyuck’s breathing became slow and rhythmic. Holding Donghyuck’s hands against his chest with one hand, and steadily brushing the hair at the nape of Donghyuck’s head with the other, it didn’t take Mark too long to also fall asleep. 

By morning, it was clear that something was different. Mark just wasn’t entirely sure _what_. 

He’d woken up a solid hour before Donghyuck even started stirring in the the bed, and was only mildly terrified about what their first exchange of the day would be. But Donghyuck only groaned and rolled around, and Mark tried to not snicker from the desk. 

“Am I alive,” it wasn’t an actual question, but Donghyuck sounded pained and annoyed at the same time, so Mark didn’t conceal his laughter. 

“Yeah,” and Donghyuck slightly raised his head, one eye narrowed and the other still shut, hair standing up and dried drool at the corner of his mouth. Any other time, and Mark would have only laughed harder, snapping three of four pictures to send in the members’ group chat, and avoid being murdered by running to another room. But that was the first time they looked at each other since their unconventional talk — the first time they looked at each other without the atmosphere suddenly turning heavy and unbearable in maybe half a year. Mark thought that perhaps time felt suspended during that brief eye contact, or maybe it was just because he had momentarily stopped breathing, only for Donghyuck to throw his head back on the pillow and raise the covers above his head.

“Then I wanna die,” came the muffled response, and Mark felt himself blush. He knew that probably, most likely, really, Donghyuck was talking about his possible hangover, but he couldn’t help wondering if it was out of embarrassment for anything he’d said or done a few hours before. 

“And skip the complimentary continental breakfast? Because it only closes in like, twenty minutes.”

At first, Donghyuck stayed silent, and Mark wondered whether he’d fallen back asleep under the covers, but then there was some rustling, and the top of his head peaked out, now both eyes open. “Did you have breakfast already?” Mark shook his head, and one of Donghyuck’s legs fell from the bed, followed by the other, and then he was fully sliding to the floor as if his body was liquid. 

“You good?”

“Yeah, yeah, give me a second,” Donghyuck reached for the water bottle on the night stand, and chugged it all in one breath. “Let’s go,” he stood up and lightly kicked the edge of Mark’s chair, and Mark felt something bloom in his chest. It was suddenly as if the past months had never happened, and at the same time, it felt like something incredibly fundamental had changed between them, but Mark still couldn’t quite pinpoint what it was. 

Seeing the others’ reactions to this new development was actually what made Mark feel a bit validated in his own insane conclusions. Taeil did a long double take when entering the restaurant, before carefully sitting down next to Donghyuck on the table and asking if he’d seen his ID. Jungwoo kept fully turning his body back on the van ride to the airport, eyes shifting from Donghyuck playing a game on his phone, to Mark beside Donghyuck pretending to read the same page for the fifth time. 

Jaehyun once jokingly asked if the room arrangement was still standing, or if he’d have to move all of his stuff back to Johnny’s room, when he had to kick Donghyuck out for the third consecutive night, and Mark could only blush instead of answering. 

Both group chats seemed to get more active, and after one particularly loud dinner and sleepover at the Dream dorm, Renjun bid him an uncharacteristically serious goodbye. 

“Glad things look okay,” he flipped Donghyuck out, calling from already inside the van for Mark to hurry up “But I hope this isn’t some temporary thing again, and that you were able to... work things out.”

Mark was silent for a moment, until Donghyuck hollered from the van again. He cleared his throat. “I think it’s as good as it can be. Now, I mean.”

Renjun nodded, slowly, and just like with Doyoung many mornings before, Mark felt a pang of guilt over the urge to tell him _everything_ , and not being able to. Then again, maybe it had nothing to do with either Doyoung or Renjun, and more to do with Mark wanting to get it out of his chest whenever anyone looked that close to figuring out. But with Donghyuck calling his name a third time, the urge seemed to disappear. 

It was fine, now. Things were fine. They had to be. 

Renjun’s eyes were still focused on Mark, calculating, and Mark gave him a sheepish smile. 

“Don’t overthink,” and this time, it was Renjun who took a moment to answer. With a dramatic sigh, shoulders falling and arms uncrossing. Renjun nodded and shooed Mark away. 

“Yeah, yeah, if you say so. It’s your problem, anyway.”

It was just that, when Donghyuck grabbed Mark by the back of his collar and dragged him to the van, listing all the breakfast menus they should be ordering so food would arrive home at the same time as them, Mark didn’t feel like it was a problem. And when Donghyuck exasperatedly rolled his eyes but still smiled at him, Mark thought that maybe it never really was. 

When with another cycle of promotions things started to get tense in the dorms, Mark felt relieved at how this time around, none of his anxiety manifested in other areas of his life again. And though he was aware that he still snapped at Donghyuck a hundred times more often than with any other member, this time it felt like before. Before everything. 

Even if sometimes, Mark felt like he was slipping. 

“I think you should re-do the adlibs on the second chorus,” his words came out faster than his brain could process, and only once Donghyuck’s melody humming stopped and Mark could only hear the clicks his own pen was making, that he realized. 

“I hope you know that if you’re picking a fight with me, it’s not gonna be pretty.”

Mark stuttered, turning around in his chair “Oh, I didn’t— Wasn’t my intention to—”

“Then shut the fuck up,” Donghyuck said with a slight bite to his tone, eyes straight on Mark’s. He sighed, folding the lyrics and leaning over the couch’s arm to grab a water bottle. “You’re not my vocal coach, and that’s your, what? Seventh completely unprompted comment about my part?”

“Ah, I’m, hm, I need to stop doing that,” Mark scratched the back of his neck, frowning. 

“Mhm,” was Donghyuck’s only response, capping the bottle and standing up, stealing Mark’s pen. “Maybe I’m too soft with how I handle your constructive criticisms. Like, why don’t pester Doyoung hyung or Jungwoo hyung too?”

 _Because I can only always see you._ “Sorry,” _because I’m always thinking about you._ “Really,” _because sometimes I can’t pretend I’m not without feeling like I’m going to explode._

“Maybe you think they’re scarier, like I wouldn’t punch you in the face if you keep unloading your stress on me,” _like that time_ went unsaid, but Mark was sure they both heard it. But Donghyuck just ripped a sticky note and pasted it on Mark’s forehead, throwing himself back on the couch, cursing about the stiffness of every piece of furniture in the studio and humming their song’s melody. 

The confusion in Mark’s face turned into heat when he got the note off his forehead, promptly turning his back before muttering about how Donghyuck couldn’t hold a candle to how scary their hyungs could be. 

**gonna get through this, always and again**

Behind Mark, Donghyuck was complaining that he could totally be more intimidating than any of the hyungs, and that he could call any of them to confirm it right at that instant, or better yet, that he would be calling them right at that instant, but Mark could only rest his chin on his hand and suppress a smile. 

Donghyuck was incessantly rambling, and Mark felt a mild sense of deja-vu from the way Donghyuck was acting like he didn’t just write an embarrassing, cheesy message for Mark, or didn’t fucking paste it right in the middle of Mark’s forehead just seconds before. There weren’t any more knots in his stomach than the usual amount he had when around Donghyuck, but casual affection was dangerous territory to Mark, and somehow a single encouraging note could hurt just as much as Donghyuck’s absentminded touches. 

Shaking his head, Mark turned his attention back to the computer in front of him, still loosely tracing the words with a finger. There were two tiny lightning drawings on the corner, and one sloppy star too close to the letters, and when Donghyuck left the studio to get their lunch delivery, Mark slipped the blue piece of paper into his wallet, right over the old, yellow one.

**Author's Note:**

> hi <3 you made it to the end <333
> 
> it’s been months since i last posted anything, so i wanted to try writing something other than fluff for a change but angst is much more challenging (and time consuming) than i expected lmfao so it makes me really happy if you felt angsty at some point reading this (in the most non sadistic way possible i swear)
> 
> i’d love love love to know your thoughts on it!!!
> 
> [twt](https://twitter.com/mxtchxlatte)


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